Actor, Dancer Gene Kelly Dies At 83

February 03, 1996|By Howard Reich, Tribune arts critic.

Remarkably, Mr. Kelly considered it almost a fluke that he ended up in Hollywood. Born Eugene Curran Kelly in Pittsburgh on Aug. 23, 1912, he dug ditches, pumped gas, hustled tires and hoofed in vaudeville houses to finance his economics degree at the University of Pittsburgh.

By the early 1930s, though, he was smitten with ballet and headed to the Midwest.

"When I studied dance in Chicago in 1932, I had this big dream of pursuing classical ballet," Mr. Kelly said.

"The problem was that there was nowhere to go after that--there were no big classic companies in the country. . . . It was right after the Chicago World's Fair, where I danced in 1933.

"But, at the time, George Balanchine (founder of New York City Ballet) had just arrived in the United States, and he didn't get his company really going until after World War II.

"Ruth Page had a company in Chicago, but she was already filled up with whatever talent she needed . . . . So I turned my little feet to Broadway."

By the time he had conquered Hollywood, Mr. Kelly had supplanted Fred Astaire as the leading male dancer on the screen. The two danced together in "Ziegfeld Follies" (1946).

With the demise of the film musical, Mr. Kelly starred in "Inherit the Wind" (1960), directed Jackie Gleason in "Gigot" (1962) and filmed the stage musical "Hello, Dolly" (1969).

He was divorced from his first wife, Betsy Blair, in 1957, and widowed by the death of his second wife, Jeannie Coyne, in 1973. He married writer Patricia Ward in 1990. He also is survived by three children.